Author: Kathryn Madden

Feature

Social Gaming: Making Minecraft a game for everyone

This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. Defying the stereotype that paints gaming as an isolating hobby, Minecrafters use the virtual world as a means of connecting with family and friends in real life. Minecraft (2009) has redefined social gaming for nearly a decade, driven mostly by prolific online communities of creative people. A growing population of Minecrafters is harnessing the power of portable computer technology to interconnect in new ways, bringing their creativity in the digital world into reality. Aside from a thriving community of modders who build upon each other’s work to achieve incredible feats, a huge…
Feature

The mixed reality mods that are changing Minecraft

This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. More than 20 million people use their imaginations to create endless virtual worlds in Minecraft (2009). Unlike most games, however, players (rather than developers) push the boundaries of Minecraft’s expansiveness. They build everything from virtual voxel versions of the Taj Mahal to the entire country of Denmark, replicas of things that exist in the real world but can be shared and modified in world of Minecraft. “The Minecraft community brings together coders, artists, musicians and content creators from all over,” said Razz, a modder best known for her decorative block models. Razz said many…
Rembrandt
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Computer algorithm mimics Rembrandt, creates his next painting

I’ve never seen The Starry Night (1899). I mean, obviously I’ve seen it. Pictures of it are everywhere; in textbooks, on t-shirts, and just about everything in between. But I’ve never actually been to MoMA and seen the physical painting The Starry Night itself. Art has been at odds with replication for centuries, all the way back to when the very earliest printing technology suddenly made art cheap enough that common (see: not rich) folk could own it. When art is no longer confined to a museum, the line between what is and isn’t art gets more and more blurry. The…
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Drones: good at spying, shooting, and now art

Will a robot ever be able to write a symphony? It’s a question pulled from that scene in I, Robot (2004) which, while cheesy, tugs on a line of thought that is only getting more relevant—if art is a particularly human endeavor, what happens when a robot tries to make art? Creators Sang-won Leigh, Harshit Agrawal, and Pattie Maes from the MIT Fluid Interfaces Lab poke at an answer to that question with their project The Flying Pantograph. The gist of it is that they’ve given a drone a marker and programmed it to draw on a canvas in response to human motions…
Burly Men at Sea
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The big beards and cute looks of Burly Men at Sea will debut soon

Who says burly can’t be cute? Certainly not David and Brooke Condolora, the husband and wife team that make up Brain & Brain, the brains (ha!) behind Burly Men at Sea, a Scandinavian folklore adventure due out soon on Steam and iOS. Though there’s still no word on an official release date, their newly released trailer serves as a reminder of the soft, minimalistic style and funky character animations that caught our eye in the first place. David and Brooke Condolora have spoken frequently about the roots of their inspiration. They borrow heavily from scandinavian folklore in both story and style…
Guildlings
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Threes! creator unveils mysterious new project

Guildlings is a new mobile fantasy adventure game from Sirvo Studios, the team behind 2014’s mobile puzzler Threes!, that might explore some of the lesser-seen sides of fantasy. Game designer Asher Vollmer and the Sirvo team have released sparing details for this new project set to be out in 2017, which we’re happy to wait for as Threes! was one of our favorite games of 2014. Though deceptively simple, the amount of meticulous design behind Threes! is staggering, both in terms of the actual puzzle design and the seamless user experience. But even with the success of Threes!, Vollmer wasn’t satisfied…
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The Breakfast Club adds absolute silliness to your morning routine

Making breakfast is easy. If I can regularly manage to pour myself a bowl of cereal in a half-asleep stupor after I wake up then it’s a testament to just how little brain power breakfast usually requires. However, breakfast isn’t quite as easy as it seems in The Breakfast Club, a product of the 2016 Global Game Jam. In it, you and three friends must work together to make breakfast. Sound simple enough? Well it’s not. With Surgeon Simulator-esque controls and the chaos of four-player co-operation, maneuvering breakfast items from plate to toaster and back again has never been more…
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Where’s Waldo? finally gets interactive in this videogame

Where’s Waldo? (1987) has stepped out of the past and into a super stylistic new game. Hidden Folks is the latest from game designer Adriaan de Jongh, in which you can relive the eyestrain of days past in a grown-up version of the classic find-the-character game. This new project comes in the wake of de Jong’s previous efforts, the quirky titles Fingle (2012) and Bounden (2014), produced with the now-defunct Game Oven. This time he’s teamed up with illustrator Sylvian Tegroeg to create something entirely different.   The premise is simple and differs little from its striped-shirt predecessor: find the hidden character in a crazy…
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QWOP goes avant-garde in this silly dancing game

I’ll admit upfront that I’m a terrible dancer. Not the kind of terrible that is actually cute. I’m talking the real, awkward kind of terrible. I blame it on being tall. It’s just not easy to make limbs in these proportions move cohesively the way I’d like them to. Maybe that’s why An Evening of Modern Dance caught my attention—it’s easy to see a bit of myself in its hilariously floundering dancers. An Evening of Modern Dance follows in the tumbling footsteps of QWOP (2008) and Octodad (2010), this time bringing ragdoll physics to the stage. Made for Ludum Dare 32 by…